NEANDERTHAL MAN 
Tue Moustier Man 
It is appropriate that the site which lends its name to 
the culture of Neanderthal times should at length have 
yielded a specimen of human remains, the so-called ‘“‘“Homo 
mousteriensis.” The skeleton is preserved in the addi- 
tion to the Ethnological Museum at Berlin, where Doctor 
Hrdligka saw it in 1923 and again in 1927. It was dis- 
covered in March, 1908, by O. Hauser, during archeo- 
logical excavations in what is known as “the lower 
Moustier cave,” or “Paleolithic station No. 44,” at Le 
Moustier, in the valley of the Vézére, Department of 
Dordogne, France, and was purchased from Herr Hauser 
for the Berlin Museum. 
The cave, or more properly rock-shelter, when exca- 
vated, gave numerous evidences of man’s occupation but 
no human bones. The skeleton was discovered in the 
terrace in front of the cave, almost vertically below its 
entrance. It lay about three feet deep, and no disturbance 
in the superimposed deposits was noticeable. 
The human bones were uncovered with great care in 
the presence of responsible witnesses, then covered again 
with earth and left in situ for several months, though 
shown during this time to a number of visitors. On 
August 8 they were exposed for Virchow, von der Steinen, 
Klaatsch, and other scientific men, and finally, two days 
afterwards, in the presence of Professor Klaatsch, they 
were taken with the utmost precautions from the deposits. 
The skeleton, it appears, lay on its side in a natural 
extended position, with the right hand under the occiput, 
the left extended along the body. About the body and 
among the bones were found seventy-four worked flints, 
ten of which were of a well-defined form. On the skull 
rested a charred bone of a wild bull and in the neighbor- 
hood of the thorax lay a tooth of the same animal. Besides 
this, forty-five other fragments of animal bones were 
gathered in close vicinity to the human remains. 
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